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Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

23K followers 800 following 1.8K posts

Researcher trying to shape AI towards positive outcomes. ML & Ethics +birds. Generally trying to do the right thing. TIME 100 | TED speaker | Senate testimony provider | Navigating public life as a recluse.
Former: Google, Microsoft; Current: Hugging Face

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Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

Here's what the UI is doing for me now (which may very well be them quickly addressing the clear pushback).

Same screenshot as original, but 'Abstract' is the bolded tab instead of 'Summary (with little stars)'. A hover-over on 'Summary (with little stars)' says "To view this AI-generated summary, you must have Premium access. Learn more. Sign in."

December 17, 2025 at 7:27 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

#SixOnSaturday 🌱

Smoke bush, orange dahlia, red mums, magenta dahlia, close up of yellow nasturtium with vermillion maple-leaf-shaped inner markings, red mums against the blue sky.

November 16, 2025 at 5:09 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

There's this form of behavioral engineering/coercion going on to use AI when you're not even trying to. Ex: Enterprise Google Slides replaced "Upload an Image", with "Generate an Image" (right?), requiring extra work +adaptation to sidestep the AI-as-default push. It drives me bonkers.

Before and After shots of Google slides menu bars, Insert --> Image. Before, the first option was "Upload from computer". After, the first option is "Generate an image", with "Upload from computer" a distant second.

November 10, 2025 at 7:18 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

🪶 Golden-crowned Kinglets at the water spout.

November 9, 2025 at 6:46 AM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

🤖 Did you know your voice might be cloned without your consent from just *one sentence* of audio?
That's not great. So with @frimelle.bsky.social, we brainstormed a new idea for developers who want to curb malicious use: ✨The Voice Consent Gate.✨
Details, code, here: huggingface.co/blog/voice-c...

Ornate line drawing of a fence and gate, with fleur de lis tips. The gate says CONSENT where the family name usually is.

October 29, 2025 at 2:26 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

Screensnapshot of our times. Corporate pressure to use AI creates bad outcomes with real-life consequences; seeking to unpack the problem yields more pressure to indulge in the very thing causing the problem.

Reuters screenshot. Headline: "Two federal judges say use of AI led to errors in US court rulings". Bottom left: Reuters AI saying, "Get the key points from this story with Reuters AI"

October 26, 2025 at 5:48 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

Life situations are bleak right now for a lot of people. In tech, the "Venn Diagram" of (1) positive work and (2) making enough money to support your family is increasingly non-overlapping. We all do what we can.
This image has been living in my mind rent-free for months.

Tech Venn Diagram
Two circles, one says "Doing work that contributes beneficially to society."; the other says "Making enough income to support a family."

October 24, 2025 at 5:05 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

#SixOnSaturday

October 12, 2025 at 6:43 AM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

🎭 As a Samuel Beckett and Alex Winter fan, I highly, highly *highly* recommend going to see this version of Godot. Laugh-out-loud funny, masterfully handled some of the confusions from text. Use of funnel as stage was brilliant. Only props were hats and shoes. Beckett would be proud.

Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter as Gogo and Didi, sitting in a funnel-shaped tan/white stage against a stark black background.

October 9, 2025 at 5:49 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

Apparently this was Portland last night. Gosh I love my home away from home. ❤️

October 8, 2025 at 3:01 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

This post about Waffles that’s going viral doesn’t credit (what I believe to be) the source, Bravo Coolee, on Twitter a few years ago. Just wanna shout out the original. Still viral thru another person’s rewrite today.

Twitter screenshot from @BravoCoolee

“Twitter is the only place where well articulated sentences still get misinterpreted.

You can say “I like pancakes” and somebody will say “So you hate waffles?’

No bitch. Dats a whole new sentence. Wtf is you talking about.

October 5, 2025 at 10:41 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

My #SixOnSaturday with Fringe Tree berries, pink Wax Begonia flowers, just-opened crimson Mums, Black-capped Chickadee eating a Dogwood berry, scarlet Nasturtium, red blueberry leaf fallen into native PNW Slough Sedge.

October 5, 2025 at 3:43 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

#SixOnSaturday appreciating the first Saturday of autumn

Rust-colored Dahlia about to bloom, Tuberous Begonia, dark red Mums about to bloom, Witch Hazel leaf turned red, red rose hips, and red Coleus Inferno.

September 28, 2025 at 4:38 AM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

🪶 🎃 It’s Halloween deco season for many — remember that those gauzy fake spider webs trap and kill birds. Don’t use them. OTOH, consider making a bird-feeder pumpkin or sticking decos on windows, which helps birds.
More here: www.audubon.org/magazine/how...

Picture of house with gauzy spiderweb material all over it.

September 26, 2025 at 3:36 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

This probably won't reach the very people who should know, but apparently I've been put on all kinds of (mostly spam) block lists and lists accusing stuff I'm vocally against, leading to me being blocked when uncritically accepted without examination. Great way to erase voices eh.

September 23, 2025 at 9:47 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

Oh hey! Nobody told me today was the rapture! TIME TO EAT JUNK FOOD AND TOUCH MUSEUM STUFF!

Picture of me in a museum, touching a Giacommetti statue and Van Gogh's Starry Night, going over the yellow line that separates people from museum art. Behind me is a spilling bag of Sour Cream potato chips, french fries, and a 1/3 eaten pizza in an open box. An angry stick-figure person stands behind me, pointing to a sign that says "STAND BEHIND YELLOW LINE", next to another sign that says "No touching". Speech bubble from me says, "It's ok! It's the rapture!"

September 23, 2025 at 9:35 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

Dan Aykroyd, who's explained that their autism helped create Ghostbusters.
childmind.org/blog/dan-ayk...

September 23, 2025 at 1:17 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

🤖 Great piece about how GenAI generates amazing visuals. Critically, creators whose work powers GenAI want to be able to consent to having their work used. That core issue gets drowned in discussions about a related but distinct issue: copyright.
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

Appropriate use of data is about more than just copyright, said Margaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at the AI company Hugging Face. "For individuals, it's consent that matters," Mitchell said. "And there really aren't legislative or political frameworks that account for that."

September 19, 2025 at 6:13 PM

Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

🤖 As AI-generated content is shared in movies/TV/across the web, there's one simple low-hanging fruit 🍇 to help know what's real: Visible watermarks. With others @hf.co, I've made sure it's trivially easy to add this disclosure to images, video, chatbot text. See how:
huggingface.co/blog/waterma...